Miller, Albert M., Jr.

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ORAL HISTORY OF ALBERT MILLER, JR.
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications
October 30, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is October 30, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Albert Miller, Jr. 8221 Bennington Drive, Knoxville, Tennessee to take his oral history about living in Oak Ridge Tennessee. Albert, would you please state your full name, where you were born, and the date.
MR. MILLER: Gladly. My name is Albert M. Miller, Jr. I was born on the 4th of July 1929 at Fort Sanders Presbyterian Hospital—it wasn’t Presbyterian Hospital in those days just Fort Sanders Hospital. As they wheeled my mother in to the delivery room, she said, “Isn’t it tacky to have a baby on the 4th of July.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s in Knoxville?
MR. MILLER: Yes. It was in Knoxville. That hospital still stands.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your father’s name and—.
MR. MILLER: Albert M. Miller, Sr.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The place of birth?
MR. MILLER: He was born in Knoxville. My mother was born—her last name was Guthrie and she was born down in lower Alabama in the coal mining community.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the dates of each of their birth?
MR. MILLER: Yes. Both of them were born 1908.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have brothers and sisters?
MR. MILLER: I had one sister. She died a couple years ago. She’s a couple years younger than I am.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s father? What was his name?
MR. MILLER: His name was Elzo. Can you imagine; E-L-Z-O, Elzo Guthrie? He was a coal miner in Alabama. He eventually went to Harlan County, Kentucky and opened the mines.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your grandfather on your father’s side?
MR. MILLER: On my father’s side, his name was George Miller. George M. Miller and he worked and had a partial ownership in a hardware store on Market Square. They lived in Park City, Tennessee, in Knoxville which is East Knoxville out where Magnolia is and Park City.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s schooling history?
MR. MILLER: I don’t know. He went to Knox High, of course. I guess he went to an elementary school in the neighborhood he grew up but he was always from Knoxville. And so he went from there to the University of Tennessee and graduated from there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his profession?
MR. MILLER: He started out working for a company called HOLC, Home Owner’s Loan Corporation which was kind of predecessor of the FHA, I think. And then he became a teller at the Park Bank for a while. And then he decided to leave that and so we moved from Knoxville to Harlan County to the coal mines that my grandfather owned on my mother’s side and Dad worked there as a pay-master in the commissary and it bored him to tears after two years, so from there we made a real cultural shock leaving Yancey, Kentucky, a coal mine, to New York City where he enrolled at Columbia University to take accounting and he got a master’s degree in accounting from Columbia University in a year and a half. From there, he got a job with Tennessee Eastman at Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay, what about your mother’s schooling? Did she finish high school?
MR. MILLER: She finished high school and went to Martha Washington College for a couple of years in upper East Tennessee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you lived in New York for how long?
MR. MILLER: A year and a half; just a period of time that it took Dad to get his master’s degree in accounting.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you left New York and came to Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Came to Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MR. MILLER: That would have been in ‘44.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get to Oak Ridge? How did the family come to Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Do you mean the mode of transportation?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. MILLER: We came by train. We made several trips back to Knoxville for Christmases and so forth and from New York City we’d come to Knoxville by train. We had to switch trains in Washington and then a train came from Washington to New Orleans and it stopped in Knoxville. So that’s how we did it. And then of course we had to drive to Oak Ridge or to Harlan where ever we were going from Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So when your father came in ’44, did he come first and then you came—.
MR. MILLER: No, we all came together. He just had the job and so we all came.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you arrived in Knoxville first?
MR. MILLER: Yes. Well, that would be the train that would bring us to Knoxville first.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then how did you get to Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Cars and I don’t remember the trip, the first trip out there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what was his profession in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: He worked—you know what, I don’t really know. I assume he worked in the Accounting Department of Tennessee Eastman. In later years as a CPA, I worked and did some audits for Tennessee Eastman up in Kingsport and I talked to a man that worked with Dad and that was the Accounting Department. So I assume that Dad worked in accounting. But in those days I was in the 9th and 10th grade in Oak Ridge. I didn’t think much about of what he was doing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work?
MR. MILLER: No. She worked harder than anybody I guess at home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you moved to Oak Ridge, where did you first live?
MR. MILLER: On Pallas off of Pennsylvania in a C House. Those were amazing to me that they’re still standing solid as they can be. It’s amazing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe what the house looked like.
MR. MILLER: I thought that C Houses were A, B, C, and Ds. I thought the C houses were the best looking because they had a little break in the monotony of the layout and they were—I guess we had three bedrooms and a single bath, living room and dining area and a kitchen. All the houses were heated with coal and when you paid rent to Eastman and when you needed coal to replenish, you’d call Eastman and they’d send it out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who is Eastman?
MR. MILLER: Tennessee Eastman.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They were the maintenance people?
MR. MILLER: Yes, they ran Oak Ridge. That was a subsidiary of Tennessee Eastman out of Kingsport which was a subsidiary of Eastman Kodak.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, if you need your house painted or you needed something fixed, they—
MR. MILLER: I never saw one painted. They were all of a material that was grayish and they’re still gray but I don’t—but for maintenance, if you had to have some, you would call Eastman.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what type of heat was in that particular house?
MR. MILLER: Coal; coals, C-O-A-L coal. We had a coal furnace and that was it. There was a lot of coal in this area. So, that’s how it was and I guess it was the cheapest. Although those houses are still standing, I assume none of them are heated with coal anymore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what type of flooring the floors had?
MR. MILLER: Hard wood. It’s the best I can recall it. It’s been a day or two.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you say—is you sister is that—was she younger or older?
MR. MILLER: She was nearly two years younger than I.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what grade did you arrive in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: I was half way through the 9th grade when we got there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what school was that you attended in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Oak Ridge High because it was nine through twelve and my sister went to one of the—there were four elementary schools that went one through eight and I don’t remember which one. The name of it, I don’t know, but I can take you to it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Before you came to Oak Ridge, kind of describe how the school that you attended was then?
MR. MILLER: The school in New York?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. MILLER: Actually, we went to a school in New York which was called Lincoln School and it was actually a branch of Columbia University. It was a teacher’s college of Columbia University and it was a one through twelve school. It was three blocks from the apartment in which we lived. My dad went to Columbia, which was just across the street from where we lived and my sister and I went—since the school was a one through twelve school and I was in the 8th and the 9th there, half the 9th. We walked three blocks to school and it was a wonderful school. I mean it was, as I say, one through twelve, it had five floors, and it had a swimming pool. It was some kind of school. It was progressive education though. I was used to, in the coal mining camp in Harlan County, I was used to a teacher who drilled, drilled, drilled, drilled and I learned more from him than anybody I’ve ever known. His name was Frank Britton. I think of Frank Britton every day of my life because he was such a wonderful teacher. But when we got to New York, it was a progressive school and they didn’t drill on you, beat on you. You could do badly if you didn’t study, but nobody was forcing you or really coming hard on you to do well and so I missed Frank Britton. I think he was the best teacher I ever had, the most remarkable man and he had such wonderful students. I didn’t mean to stray from New York to Yancey, Kentucky, but he’s important to me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when you were in Kentucky in school and you went to New York that was quite a different—.
MR. MILLER: You talk about a cultural shock, yes. We had about fifteen hundred people that lived in our camp. They were called coal mining camps and it was a wonderful experience in a way except being all uprooted from Knoxville and going there. But on the other hand, I met a lot of wonderful people and as I say the best school I ever went to. Mr. Britton had a philosophy of teaching which was to drill, drill, drill, drill. He taught us Math and English Grammar and History, American History - one of my favorite subjects. If you didn’t get it very well, he would invite you out in the hall and impress you with his belt. He never had to do that to me because I can still hear them scream, but I respect him for that. It was the best school I ever went to. I learned so much. And when I got to New York, my 9th grade English Grammar teacher wrote the book that we were using and then after a few weeks, she said, “Albert, you know everything in this book.” And I said, “It’s all because of Mr. Britton, not because of me.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, in Oak Ridge school, what did you see different in Oak Ridge than New York for example?
MR. MILLER: Well, it was kind of like, of course New York was a city of I don’t know how many million people at that time and Oak Ridge was a closed community. You had four gates that you could go out of, but two gates, I never saw, I haven’t seen them yet. Everybody had a badge with his picture on it, even us kids in school. And so it was a tremendous experience. I mean, you talk about the difference from New York City to anywhere else!!! I don’t know how Oak Ridge could have been further from that than it was but I loved Oak Ridge too. It was great. I worked at—this last summer of ’45, the first part of the summer, I worked at an Esso station and in those days gas was rationed. You got five gallons of gas a week and Oak Ridge became the 5th largest city in the State of Tennessee. Some people drove, they had special permission and gas, from Chattanooga to Oak Ridge on a daily basis, I thought that was a real drive, but not many drove. Most of us lived there, There were four gas stations in all of Oak Ridge. There were 75,000 people and when the shifts changed at four o’clock, the lines to our station really shined. It really came—it was Esso stations owned by two brothers whose names were Brooks. Last name were Brooks and they insisted that we do what service stations had done before the war when they had to be good for business-like shine their windows, check the air in their tires. Nobody did that in those days but at Brooks Brothers Esso Station, they did and therefore, I can just see them today - cars lined up over the hill to come to our station when they had their stamps.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the station located?
MR. MILLER: In East Town and I don’t know the name of the street.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In East Village?
MR. MILLER: Yes, yes, I guess—.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Or was it in the Jackson Square?
MR. MILLER: No, it would be East Village more.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get back and forth to school?
MR. MILLER: Bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about riding the buses in Oak Ridge.
MR. MILLER: They were just a standard school bus type thing but they weren’t school buses. They were the transportation buses. I think they cost 15 cents to ride the bus in those days. I could be wrong. But that’s the how I got—.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember some of your teachers in the high school?
MR. MILLER: I’ve got the annual, I’ll remember them. Mr. Eisenberg taught science, Coach taught health.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember some of the classes you took?
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You have a choice of classes when you went to the high school?
MR. MILLER: Well, you had some choice. You always took English. Well, I took English Grammar there and I took two courses in the both of the 9th and the 10th grades, I took science. Biology was one and general science was the other, I guess. Seems like the teacher’s name was Eisenberg, I’m not sure, in both of those classes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about sports? Did you participate in sports?
MR. MILLER: I want out for track. Of course we had gym classes that were compulsory but I also went out for track the first year we were there. It was because my mother was trying to build a yard and the coach was not near as tough as she was. And so my sister had boyfriends who thought they’d make impressions on her by working in my mother’s yard. So, it worked well. So I wasn’t a very good track star by any means but it kept me at the school until too late to work in the yard.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was your parents pretty strict on you growing up?
MR. MILLER: I thought they were the greatest parents in the world. They didn’t allow a lot of foolishness but I don’t have any quarrels with them. They knew what they were doing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the high school located?
MR. MILLER: That I went to?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. MILLER: Above Town Square which is where the old football—I guess there’s a football field still there? That’s where the school was and I’ve been around that football field a thousand times.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you describe what the school looked like?
MR. MILLER: Well to me, I of course see it in my mind’s eye, it was as I recall it a tan-ish building sitting above there on the hill and it covered a good bit of the ground. And it was a wonderful school, I thought well of and it had no history. All of a sudden, it just blossomed there. I guess it had been opened a year or two before we got there but it was a wonderful school and the principal was a nice gentleman. I wasn’t the best student they had by any stretch of imagination especially in Spanish, I was bad. My Spanish teacher in New York City wrote on the back of my report card, “I recommend Albert not take Spanish anymore.” And I’ve still got that note by the way after all these years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, how did you compare what you learned in Oak Ridge High School versus being in New York School?
MR. MILLER: I never thought about it. It was just a progression from that at Lincoln School in New York to Oak Ridge High in Oak Ridge and it was just—as I sit back and think about it now, that’s where I was supposed to be and that’s what I was supposed to do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, did you find when you came from New York to the Oak Ridge school system? Were you prepared by it any better or worse or—?
MR. MILLER: The problem I had was that when I went from the Kentucky school of such discipline to a progressive school in New York where it was “Johnny, don’t you want to do this,” and you’re expected to but when I answer a question like that, it sounds to me like you have a choice of yes or no and I hadn’t been used to that. And then when we moved to Oak Ridge, of course it was very, very new, of course. But the teachers were fine. Mrs. Swain was the Spanish teacher now that I recall her name and her husband was a teacher, I think, at the University but I never thought about the difference between New York and Oak Ridge. It was just a step I had to take. It was different. There’s no question. It was certainly a more disciplined school in Oak Ridge and that’s what I was more used to than “don’t you want to do this” attitude in New York.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were the teachers young adults?
MR. MILLER: Many were, yes. Yes, not all of them. Mrs. Swain wasn’t so young, Dr. Eisenberg wasn’t either. As soon as the war was over, we left and we moved to Knoxville and I went the last two years at Knox High and the teachers there certainly were mostly older than the ones in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So how did you perceive from Oak Ridge to Knox High? What was the difference there if any?
MR. MILLER: The main difference was that again, I was uprooted and I don’t mean to sound harsh that way but I was moved from one community, which I begin to get acquainted with to a new community. Of course I knew Knoxville. I’ve been here lots and I’d lived here for ten years before, but I was in a school in which I knew very few people. I knew some and hadn’t seen them for years and years but that’s always a difficult thing I would think for a youngster is to come in to a group where you don’t really know very, very many people. My sister was much more charming than I and she went to Tyson for the 9th grade, which was her last year in the junior high and she didn’t have any problems because she was charming. I didn’t have a lot of problems. The principal at Knox High was a very fine gentleman and I had no real cause to run into him much but he helped me with my locker one time and I’ve never forgotten that. His name was Mr. Evans.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were going to the high school, did you date any?
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you go on your dates?
MR. MILLER: Sometimes, we’d—mostly movies and then we’d go to a drive-in to have a coke and hamburger maybe, if I had enough money.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the Snow White Drive-In?
MR. MILLER: Oh, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about the Snow White Drive-In?
MR. MILLER: Prettiest girl that waited on us was there. I don’t remember the food.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you ever inside the Snow White Drive-In?
MR. MILLER: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just curb service?
MR. MILLER: That’s all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How was your mother as far as grocery shopping? Do you recall where she went or did her grocery shopping in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: There weren’t many places. I assume she went to the closest shopping—I mean literally the shopping areas—close to our house. We lived on Disston. That’s where I remember mostly. We lived on Pallas for a while and then moved to Disston and whatever that shopping center was out there across the street—was it Elm Grove School? Then that’s where I would assume she did most of her shopping. Although, in the very first days we got there, I think the main grocery store for the whole town was right there in Town Square across from the drugstore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Community store?
MR. MILLER: Yes. I forgot the name and then there down as one went toward where Ed’s Pizza eventually was, it wasn’t there then, was another grocery store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A&P Store was there.
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you go with your mother shopping?
MR. MILLER: Not much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do recall standing in line in the stores?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes. I remember seeing people when cigarettes would come to town, I’ve seen people line up for blocks to get one pack of Camel cigarettes or whatever cigarettes were rationed and if there was rationing, most of the cigarettes as I understand it, (I never did smoke,) but cigarettes went to the military and that’s fine.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you do in the summertime while you were in between grades?
MR. MILLER: I just had one summer in Oak Ridge and I came to Knoxville occasionally. You had to wear your badge to go through the gate, I took the buses. I’d come to movies and so forth. And I had some family in Knoxville that I’ve visited and old friends. So it’s just things teenagers do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well tell me about your experience going in and out of the gates.
MR. MILLER: Everybody had or should have had a pass with their picture on it. There were four gates as I said to get in and out of Oak Ridge. The very first trips I ever took to Knoxville on a Saturday would be out through Elza Gate on a bus. They’d get on—a guard would get on the bus and check, see if everybody had their badges and the bus would go to Clinton and stop. We had to change buses in Clinton to go to Knoxville. Eventually, we went out Solway Gate and we didn’t have to stop and change buses but that was—I didn’t do that a lot. I stayed in Oak Ridge most of the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you arrive in Knoxville when you rode the bus?
MR. MILLER: Downtown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you got the bus downtown to come back to Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Yes, just reversed the process.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what the fare was at that time?
MR. MILLER: I think it was fifteen cents. I know that the buses and street cars were at Knoxville earlier than that and maybe then too were six cents. You could buy tokens five for thirty cents.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you work any during the summer while you were in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: At that service station. I worked nine and a half hours a day, six days a week and made five dollars a day.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what were your major job duties?
MR. MILLER: We didn’t do grease jobs. All we did was change—was fill up gas tanks or give them five gallons. That’s what their coupons would allow. We checked their air. Nobody else ever did that. That’s what we had—We wiped windshields. We’ve sold oil too. I never did put any oil in it myself.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you say coupons, what are you referring to?
MR. MILLER: Gas was rationed as it was with food and so they had—it wasn’t really a coupon as much as it was kind of a little coin as I recall.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A token?
MR. MILLER: Yes, token would be a better choice.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So how did your parents get the rationing tokens?
MR. MILLER: You know I don’t know. I don’t know. My dad of course worked. There was a Hamilton Bank at Town Site and I don’t know if there was an exchange of checks for tokens and cash like that. And I assumed that cash was good too but I remember the tokens more I do cash.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And your father was an accountant still at this time?
MR. MILLER: Yes, that was his first accounting job as a matter of fact because he had just come from New York City; he had just graduated with a Masters in Accounting and never done any accounting before.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how he got to work back and forth?
MR. MILLER: No. I assumed he took the bus as well because we had one car and I think my mother drove it more than he did but I don’t know. Maybe she took him. I really don’t know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he work shift work?
MR. MILLER: No. He was just day time and where their offices were, I don’t even know. Never did know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he ever say anything about his job when he went to work?
MR. MILLER: No and if he ever knew, if he ever knew what was going on in Oak Ridge regarding the atomic bomb, he has not told me yet and he’s been dead for some years. But I don’t think many people did know. I assumed there were few more who knew than we thought but I never heard anybody who had a clue. I didn’t know what was happening in Oak Ridge until the first bomb was dropped.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you when you heard the news about the bomb?
MR. MILLER: I guess at home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know what your reaction was?
MR. MILLER: Oh, it was fantastic. I mean, it was terrible to think of so many people dying but people were dying. There was a war going on. They were getting shot and bombed at and so anything that had a start of toward ending this terrible war, which was then four years in length was a wonderful thing and one week later, of course the second bomb was dropped and the war was over and that was great, great day. My mother and friends of hers had a party at our house. It was just a gathering of good friendships and one of my father’s friends was a man named Vick Leach and his wife was named Irene and their daughter Priscilla was a classmate of mine I knew. So Priscilla was in the house with them. We wanted to take my father’s car and go visit our friends. We didn’t want to stay for the adult party and my father said, “Albert doesn’t have a license.” Well she didn’t either but her father gave her his car and so we went out to visit friends there. We just hopped from house to house, a few houses of friends to—on VJ day. It was a wonderful time and I don’t think I’ll forget that soon. It was something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you get your driver’s license at Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: No. I wasn’t old enough to drive.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What else do you remember about the Town Site shopping area?
MR. MILLER: As I recall going from the hill of the school looking down on the square that was the Town Site, there was a drugstore and a Hamilton Bank and a men’s store and then some steps that went down to where the post office was and across there I don’t recall on that backside except over in the corner was a Rec Hall and that’s where a lot of recreation went on where Pollack’s music was piped from time to time and the High School or the bureau of Recreation gave the High School that Rec Hall for a Saturday Night Dance every Saturday. And the High School then pulled together some of the top musicians in the local high school band and had a dance band formed.
It had no piano player. There was one piano player, very good, but he went with one of the big bands in town and so it fell upon me to be their piano player for this dance band. We made $3, each one of us, every Saturday night. I couldn’t spend $3. The only problem is I didn’t realize I was so dumb about musicians. I thought that everybody in an orchestra played the same note. I didn’t know there were melody and harmony and rhythm and all that and the piano in a dance band is a rhythm instrument like the drum and it basically the music was boom, boom, boom, boom—and just keeping time and I don’t keep time very well. And when the trombonist who was the—his name was Doc Bauer, when he was not blowing trombone, he was hollering, “Miller one, two, three,” because I was really bad. There were times when the band was finished with a song and I wasn’t or sometimes I was finished and they weren’t. But you had to have a piano player so I fit that. But it was fun and as I said I got three dollars every Saturday night.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well tell me about the dances on the tennis courts.
MR. MILLER: Those were opened to practically anybody, I guess because I know we went there but adults did too and the main tennis court when I went to was just off to the—again from that side to the right of the Town Site and Pollack’s music, he had the town wired for sound. Is that his name I think?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Bill Pollack.
MR. MILLER: Bill Pollack, yes and he had—wherever you want to dance, he had music piped in from somewhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they charge you for the dancing?
MR. MILLER: I don’t remember any charge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now the Rec Hall you’re referring to in the Town Site area, was that above the library?
MR. MILLER: Probably so. No, the library was—I never went to the library. There were steps going down from Town Site to a bus stop underneath there and the Rec Hall, which is over to the left from high school view was on that level as same as the grocery store and drugstore and the Hamilton Bank.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the Central Cafeteria that was down when you referring going down the steps to catch the bus on down Central Avenue on the right, there was a cafeteria?
MR. MILLER: I never went to it, if I do. I don’t really recall it. I’d eat at home or at school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So that’s where you caught the best bus to leave from school as well as get off the bus to come to school?
MR. MILLER: Yes, right. So we got to climb up that hill.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At that time were those steps wooden or were they concrete?
MR. MILLER: I would think wooden but I’m not sure. I haven’t been on one of those in a long time although I go to Oak Ridge frequently.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend the football games—?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes. We weren’t too good but there was a couple of brothers named Zirkle that were very good players and one of them was a better football player than the other but they were both track stars. They were very, very good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the other home you lived in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: First one was Pallas off of Pennsylvania. The second one—that was a C house, very nice and laid out. I think the better looking of all of them. But the second house was on Disston off of Delaware which was a D-house. It actually had two baths. It was a little bigger house and it was—and we were there I guess more than, a little more than half the time in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why you moved from the C to the D house?
MR. MILLER: I guess because it was available and a little more room and there were—they didn’t asked me. I just followed the trail.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have to share a bedroom?
MR. MILLER: No. Both the houses had three bedrooms.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So how many people were in there?
MR. MILLER: Four. My mother and father in one room, my sister had one, I had one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about kids coming to the house when you were that age? Did you have pals you chummed around with?
MR. MILLER: Not many. I had a very good friend who was a singer in our band or in our dance band. His name is Gene Kirk. He became a Methodist Minister, lives in Knoxville now and he was a great singer and a good friend. He lived close by to me. His father was in the shoe repair business and wonderful, wonderful family. I thought the world of them. So I ran mostly with him and then—Gene Kirk and then another guy was in our trio. His name was Henson, Elvin Henson and I haven’t seen Elvin in many years; nor Gene either for a while.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you walk or ride the bus or did you have a bicycle or how did you get around mostly?
MR. MILLER: Well, mostly we either walked or took the bus. None of us—at that time I was there, were sixteen. We couldn’t have—we couldn’t drive. And cars, you know, it was tough to find gas for cars. So like I say, per car was five gallons a week. One dollar and twenty-seven cents is what we charged for five gallons of gas at Brooks Brothers Esso Station. It’s a little higher now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Quite a bit.
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I don’t think we’ll ever see that price again.
MR. MILLER: Like about fifteen times or sixteen times—but I just took the bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you feel safe living in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Never thought about anything else. Yes. You mean because of what it could—see, we didn’t know what it was. We didn’t know what was going on and I guess that was what they aimed that nobody knew what was going on. Although, I guess the Germans and the Japanese probably knew. I don’t know. I really don’t. I never worried about safety.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the military police? Do you see a lot of those people?
MR. MILLER: Not a lot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about military people altogether?
MR. MILLER: You did see some, yes. So we knew that it was—and the fact that it was closed and everybody had to have a badge. We weren’t idiots, we knew that something was going on but at the 9th and 10th grade in high school, I didn’t worry a whole lot about it. I was very keenly aware of the war and the tragedies and the disabilities and the deaths were just piling up like crazy but it was some distance from my habitation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall seeing billboards around town about keeping your mouth shut?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Secrecy?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes, absolutely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: War bond drives?
MR. MILLER: War bond drives. $18.75 would buy a twenty-five dollar war bond. By the time it matured in a number of years it wasn’t biggest thing but it was a way of financing, the war. When we lived in New York, there would be war bond rallies with big time stars at Madison Square Garden to sell war bonds. You could buy stamps too and put them in a book. The saving stamps cost a dime or something like that. I forgot—.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were the stamps available in school?
MR. MILLER: Oh, yes. You can—it was no shortage of where—I didn’t buy many because I didn’t have much money but—.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you spend your money on when you had money?
MR. MILLER: I like to go to that drugstore. The guy was really good with making chocolate nut fudge sundaes. I like that. I didn’t spend my life doing that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which drugstore?
MR. MILLER: That was down on the Town Site. When I first moved there, there weren’t any others. That was it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Would that be the Service Drugstore where Big Ed’s Pizza is today?
MR. MILLER: Except it was way to the west of Ed’s. Big Ed’s—this is more in front of the high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that’s William’s Drugstore.
MR. MILLER: Yes, okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you like their sodas?
MR. MILLER: Yes. Well I like their hot fudged sundaes well too. I had a friend there that worked there. He really loaded it up. He was a nice guy. I can’t remember his name. I wouldn’t want to tell on him anyway.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So after you graduated from high school in Knoxville, how did you pursue your career?
MR. MILLER: I went to the University of Tennessee. I had wanted to be an actor and I later was in a play in Ohio years and years later. This is drifting a minute and I had a pretty big part in a play and they taped the dress rehearsal so that the cast could watch it and when I saw how terrible I was, I thought—and now I know why I never made it as an actor but I was in some plays at the high school in Oak Ridge too and in Knox High too later on and at the University of Tennessee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall boardwalks in Oak Ridge; the wooden boardwalks?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes. And mud. Surely you’ve heard some people talk of the mud in Oak Ridge because that’s what it was. I remember the mud more than the boardwalks. I rarely walked where there were boardwalks because I go up the hill to the school and home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of music did you like?
MR. MILLER: I liked the popular music of the big band that was going on in those days; Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller and that kind of thing. That’s been my favorite kind.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were referring to a badge you had to wear. Do you remember where you went to get the badge?
MR. MILLER: It was somewhere on the other side of—as I look again, the Town Site. On the other side of the Town Site, you’d have to leave the Town Site on the right from looking down on it. In a side office, there was strip of offices there and I never went again just to get my badge because I kept the badge and I never lost it. I wish I had it. I don’t anymore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was probably Town Hall.
MR. MILLER: Probably. Yes, yes, that’s exactly right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the newspaper in town at that time?
MR. MILLER: What was that—the Oak Ridger or was it the name of it?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes. There was a newspaper, the Oak Ridger, still is.
MR. MILLER: I didn’t read the paper that much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the Oak Ridge Journal?
MR. MILLER: I’m not sure that I do. My memory is not as good as I thought it was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you went to finish high school in Knoxville, did your parents move out Oak Ridge to Knoxville?
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why they did that?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes. My dad wanted to become a CPA and open an office. And in doing that, we moved to Knoxville and he started studying to take the CPA test and he eventually became President of the Tennessee Society of Certified Public Accountants and I became one, a CPA too but I didn’t climb as high in the local society as he did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about where you met your wife.
MR. MILLER: I was living in—I was working for Price Waterhouse, which was at that time the world’s largest CPA firm and I was working in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the Price Waterhouse Office. My dad had merged earlier than that with a firm of CPAs in Nashville. He had his own practice here and I worked for him then he merged with a CPA firm in Nashville, which then became a Price Waterhouse Office. And Price Waterhouse would not allow a father and son to be in the same office. So I moved and that chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, and met my wife in a play we were both in, in Tulsa.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about children? Do you have children?
MR. MILLER: Yes. This happens to be the second wife I’m talking about. First wife is from Dandridge, a marvelous girl who is the mother of all four of my children. She’s also a CPA. When she was in school at UT, she had—there were only two girls in the entire School of Accounting and she was one of them and she only made one C. I made a lot of C’s myself. All her grades were A’s and B’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So when you lived in Oak Ridge, how would you rate that time? How would you describe that time that you lived in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Certainly, I hold it in high regard. I met some wonderful people. It was an experience a very few people in the world have had to live in a community that was so much a part of what the war effort was in those days. I mean, it was the saddest thing. Everyday headlines in whatever paper you’re in—the New York papers or the Knoxville Sentinel or the Knoxville Journal, it was all war, war, war. I finally remember when Errol Flynn was acquitted of adultery or, (it was the first headline in the war that I’d ever seen that wasn’t a war headline) of rape he was accused of and I don’t mean to clutter up Errol Flynn’s name. He did a good job himself. Anyway, the newspapers were just everyday full of war and it was nice to have it over and for it to stop. It was a terrible time and so many people died on both sides.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you think the Oak Ridge school system—what little time you attended, helped you further your education?
MR. MILLER: Oh, absolutely. It’s remarkable. What they did—I was there early, not the earliest but soon there-after and in the high school, there were some wonderful teachers there. I was very impressed with it and I have pleasant memories of Oak Ridge High in my year and a half which was the last half of the 9th and all of the 10th. I was in six schools from the first grade through the twelfth which is too many. I was always jealous of kids who grew up with people one through twelve.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have to visit the Oak Ridge Hospital during your time?
MR. MILLER: Yes. I used to go—I had hay fever and asthma in fall season; ragweed mainly and I took hay fever shots at that hospital and I was there two or three times a week after school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about dental offices? Did you have to use a dentist?
MR. MILLER: Never. We had a dentist friend in Knoxville that my mother had used for years and we used for many years afterwards and so we came to Knoxville for dental.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you think of anything else that we hadn’t talked about that you’d like to talk about Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Well, I just want to say I have such pleasant memories. It’s a joy for me to talk about it. I don’t know how joyous it’ll be for anybody else to hear it or see it but to me, it’s a very important part of my life. When you think about the population of the world, there aren’t many of us who were there at that time and lived there and saw it. It was remarkable. It was very remarkable and the fact that it even existed and was built so fast. I understand that the rate of house building was one every nine hours and the fact that they still stand and look as good as they did then to me is absolutely remarkable to some kind of engineering. Who it was, I don’t know but it was something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well it’s been my pleasure to interview you and I think this information will be very valuable in the future for Oak Ridge Oral History.
MR. MILLER: I’m honored that you’ve asked me and I’m flattered and I appreciate doing it. I love Oak Ridge and I thank you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, we thank you for your time.
MR. MILLER: You’re very kind.
[END OF INTERVIEW]

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ORAL HISTORY OF ALBERT MILLER, JR.
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications
October 30, 2012
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is October 30, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of Albert Miller, Jr. 8221 Bennington Drive, Knoxville, Tennessee to take his oral history about living in Oak Ridge Tennessee. Albert, would you please state your full name, where you were born, and the date.
MR. MILLER: Gladly. My name is Albert M. Miller, Jr. I was born on the 4th of July 1929 at Fort Sanders Presbyterian Hospital—it wasn’t Presbyterian Hospital in those days just Fort Sanders Hospital. As they wheeled my mother in to the delivery room, she said, “Isn’t it tacky to have a baby on the 4th of July.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s in Knoxville?
MR. MILLER: Yes. It was in Knoxville. That hospital still stands.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your father’s name and—.
MR. MILLER: Albert M. Miller, Sr.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The place of birth?
MR. MILLER: He was born in Knoxville. My mother was born—her last name was Guthrie and she was born down in lower Alabama in the coal mining community.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the dates of each of their birth?
MR. MILLER: Yes. Both of them were born 1908.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have brothers and sisters?
MR. MILLER: I had one sister. She died a couple years ago. She’s a couple years younger than I am.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s father? What was his name?
MR. MILLER: His name was Elzo. Can you imagine; E-L-Z-O, Elzo Guthrie? He was a coal miner in Alabama. He eventually went to Harlan County, Kentucky and opened the mines.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your grandfather on your father’s side?
MR. MILLER: On my father’s side, his name was George Miller. George M. Miller and he worked and had a partial ownership in a hardware store on Market Square. They lived in Park City, Tennessee, in Knoxville which is East Knoxville out where Magnolia is and Park City.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your father’s schooling history?
MR. MILLER: I don’t know. He went to Knox High, of course. I guess he went to an elementary school in the neighborhood he grew up but he was always from Knoxville. And so he went from there to the University of Tennessee and graduated from there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was his profession?
MR. MILLER: He started out working for a company called HOLC, Home Owner’s Loan Corporation which was kind of predecessor of the FHA, I think. And then he became a teller at the Park Bank for a while. And then he decided to leave that and so we moved from Knoxville to Harlan County to the coal mines that my grandfather owned on my mother’s side and Dad worked there as a pay-master in the commissary and it bored him to tears after two years, so from there we made a real cultural shock leaving Yancey, Kentucky, a coal mine, to New York City where he enrolled at Columbia University to take accounting and he got a master’s degree in accounting from Columbia University in a year and a half. From there, he got a job with Tennessee Eastman at Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay, what about your mother’s schooling? Did she finish high school?
MR. MILLER: She finished high school and went to Martha Washington College for a couple of years in upper East Tennessee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you lived in New York for how long?
MR. MILLER: A year and a half; just a period of time that it took Dad to get his master’s degree in accounting.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you left New York and came to Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Came to Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What year was that?
MR. MILLER: That would have been in ‘44.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get to Oak Ridge? How did the family come to Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Do you mean the mode of transportation?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. MILLER: We came by train. We made several trips back to Knoxville for Christmases and so forth and from New York City we’d come to Knoxville by train. We had to switch trains in Washington and then a train came from Washington to New Orleans and it stopped in Knoxville. So that’s how we did it. And then of course we had to drive to Oak Ridge or to Harlan where ever we were going from Knoxville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So when your father came in ’44, did he come first and then you came—.
MR. MILLER: No, we all came together. He just had the job and so we all came.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you arrived in Knoxville first?
MR. MILLER: Yes. Well, that would be the train that would bring us to Knoxville first.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then how did you get to Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Cars and I don’t remember the trip, the first trip out there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what was his profession in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: He worked—you know what, I don’t really know. I assume he worked in the Accounting Department of Tennessee Eastman. In later years as a CPA, I worked and did some audits for Tennessee Eastman up in Kingsport and I talked to a man that worked with Dad and that was the Accounting Department. So I assume that Dad worked in accounting. But in those days I was in the 9th and 10th grade in Oak Ridge. I didn’t think much about of what he was doing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your mother work?
MR. MILLER: No. She worked harder than anybody I guess at home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you moved to Oak Ridge, where did you first live?
MR. MILLER: On Pallas off of Pennsylvania in a C House. Those were amazing to me that they’re still standing solid as they can be. It’s amazing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Describe what the house looked like.
MR. MILLER: I thought that C Houses were A, B, C, and Ds. I thought the C houses were the best looking because they had a little break in the monotony of the layout and they were—I guess we had three bedrooms and a single bath, living room and dining area and a kitchen. All the houses were heated with coal and when you paid rent to Eastman and when you needed coal to replenish, you’d call Eastman and they’d send it out.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who is Eastman?
MR. MILLER: Tennessee Eastman.
MR. HUNNICUTT: They were the maintenance people?
MR. MILLER: Yes, they ran Oak Ridge. That was a subsidiary of Tennessee Eastman out of Kingsport which was a subsidiary of Eastman Kodak.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, if you need your house painted or you needed something fixed, they—
MR. MILLER: I never saw one painted. They were all of a material that was grayish and they’re still gray but I don’t—but for maintenance, if you had to have some, you would call Eastman.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what type of heat was in that particular house?
MR. MILLER: Coal; coals, C-O-A-L coal. We had a coal furnace and that was it. There was a lot of coal in this area. So, that’s how it was and I guess it was the cheapest. Although those houses are still standing, I assume none of them are heated with coal anymore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what type of flooring the floors had?
MR. MILLER: Hard wood. It’s the best I can recall it. It’s been a day or two.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you say—is you sister is that—was she younger or older?
MR. MILLER: She was nearly two years younger than I.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what grade did you arrive in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: I was half way through the 9th grade when we got there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what school was that you attended in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Oak Ridge High because it was nine through twelve and my sister went to one of the—there were four elementary schools that went one through eight and I don’t remember which one. The name of it, I don’t know, but I can take you to it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Before you came to Oak Ridge, kind of describe how the school that you attended was then?
MR. MILLER: The school in New York?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. MILLER: Actually, we went to a school in New York which was called Lincoln School and it was actually a branch of Columbia University. It was a teacher’s college of Columbia University and it was a one through twelve school. It was three blocks from the apartment in which we lived. My dad went to Columbia, which was just across the street from where we lived and my sister and I went—since the school was a one through twelve school and I was in the 8th and the 9th there, half the 9th. We walked three blocks to school and it was a wonderful school. I mean it was, as I say, one through twelve, it had five floors, and it had a swimming pool. It was some kind of school. It was progressive education though. I was used to, in the coal mining camp in Harlan County, I was used to a teacher who drilled, drilled, drilled, drilled and I learned more from him than anybody I’ve ever known. His name was Frank Britton. I think of Frank Britton every day of my life because he was such a wonderful teacher. But when we got to New York, it was a progressive school and they didn’t drill on you, beat on you. You could do badly if you didn’t study, but nobody was forcing you or really coming hard on you to do well and so I missed Frank Britton. I think he was the best teacher I ever had, the most remarkable man and he had such wonderful students. I didn’t mean to stray from New York to Yancey, Kentucky, but he’s important to me.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when you were in Kentucky in school and you went to New York that was quite a different—.
MR. MILLER: You talk about a cultural shock, yes. We had about fifteen hundred people that lived in our camp. They were called coal mining camps and it was a wonderful experience in a way except being all uprooted from Knoxville and going there. But on the other hand, I met a lot of wonderful people and as I say the best school I ever went to. Mr. Britton had a philosophy of teaching which was to drill, drill, drill, drill. He taught us Math and English Grammar and History, American History - one of my favorite subjects. If you didn’t get it very well, he would invite you out in the hall and impress you with his belt. He never had to do that to me because I can still hear them scream, but I respect him for that. It was the best school I ever went to. I learned so much. And when I got to New York, my 9th grade English Grammar teacher wrote the book that we were using and then after a few weeks, she said, “Albert, you know everything in this book.” And I said, “It’s all because of Mr. Britton, not because of me.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, in Oak Ridge school, what did you see different in Oak Ridge than New York for example?
MR. MILLER: Well, it was kind of like, of course New York was a city of I don’t know how many million people at that time and Oak Ridge was a closed community. You had four gates that you could go out of, but two gates, I never saw, I haven’t seen them yet. Everybody had a badge with his picture on it, even us kids in school. And so it was a tremendous experience. I mean, you talk about the difference from New York City to anywhere else!!! I don’t know how Oak Ridge could have been further from that than it was but I loved Oak Ridge too. It was great. I worked at—this last summer of ’45, the first part of the summer, I worked at an Esso station and in those days gas was rationed. You got five gallons of gas a week and Oak Ridge became the 5th largest city in the State of Tennessee. Some people drove, they had special permission and gas, from Chattanooga to Oak Ridge on a daily basis, I thought that was a real drive, but not many drove. Most of us lived there, There were four gas stations in all of Oak Ridge. There were 75,000 people and when the shifts changed at four o’clock, the lines to our station really shined. It really came—it was Esso stations owned by two brothers whose names were Brooks. Last name were Brooks and they insisted that we do what service stations had done before the war when they had to be good for business-like shine their windows, check the air in their tires. Nobody did that in those days but at Brooks Brothers Esso Station, they did and therefore, I can just see them today - cars lined up over the hill to come to our station when they had their stamps.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the station located?
MR. MILLER: In East Town and I don’t know the name of the street.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In East Village?
MR. MILLER: Yes, yes, I guess—.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Or was it in the Jackson Square?
MR. MILLER: No, it would be East Village more.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get back and forth to school?
MR. MILLER: Bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about riding the buses in Oak Ridge.
MR. MILLER: They were just a standard school bus type thing but they weren’t school buses. They were the transportation buses. I think they cost 15 cents to ride the bus in those days. I could be wrong. But that’s the how I got—.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember some of your teachers in the high school?
MR. MILLER: I’ve got the annual, I’ll remember them. Mr. Eisenberg taught science, Coach taught health.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember some of the classes you took?
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You have a choice of classes when you went to the high school?
MR. MILLER: Well, you had some choice. You always took English. Well, I took English Grammar there and I took two courses in the both of the 9th and the 10th grades, I took science. Biology was one and general science was the other, I guess. Seems like the teacher’s name was Eisenberg, I’m not sure, in both of those classes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about sports? Did you participate in sports?
MR. MILLER: I want out for track. Of course we had gym classes that were compulsory but I also went out for track the first year we were there. It was because my mother was trying to build a yard and the coach was not near as tough as she was. And so my sister had boyfriends who thought they’d make impressions on her by working in my mother’s yard. So, it worked well. So I wasn’t a very good track star by any means but it kept me at the school until too late to work in the yard.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was your parents pretty strict on you growing up?
MR. MILLER: I thought they were the greatest parents in the world. They didn’t allow a lot of foolishness but I don’t have any quarrels with them. They knew what they were doing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the high school located?
MR. MILLER: That I went to?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. MILLER: Above Town Square which is where the old football—I guess there’s a football field still there? That’s where the school was and I’ve been around that football field a thousand times.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you describe what the school looked like?
MR. MILLER: Well to me, I of course see it in my mind’s eye, it was as I recall it a tan-ish building sitting above there on the hill and it covered a good bit of the ground. And it was a wonderful school, I thought well of and it had no history. All of a sudden, it just blossomed there. I guess it had been opened a year or two before we got there but it was a wonderful school and the principal was a nice gentleman. I wasn’t the best student they had by any stretch of imagination especially in Spanish, I was bad. My Spanish teacher in New York City wrote on the back of my report card, “I recommend Albert not take Spanish anymore.” And I’ve still got that note by the way after all these years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, how did you compare what you learned in Oak Ridge High School versus being in New York School?
MR. MILLER: I never thought about it. It was just a progression from that at Lincoln School in New York to Oak Ridge High in Oak Ridge and it was just—as I sit back and think about it now, that’s where I was supposed to be and that’s what I was supposed to do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, did you find when you came from New York to the Oak Ridge school system? Were you prepared by it any better or worse or—?
MR. MILLER: The problem I had was that when I went from the Kentucky school of such discipline to a progressive school in New York where it was “Johnny, don’t you want to do this,” and you’re expected to but when I answer a question like that, it sounds to me like you have a choice of yes or no and I hadn’t been used to that. And then when we moved to Oak Ridge, of course it was very, very new, of course. But the teachers were fine. Mrs. Swain was the Spanish teacher now that I recall her name and her husband was a teacher, I think, at the University but I never thought about the difference between New York and Oak Ridge. It was just a step I had to take. It was different. There’s no question. It was certainly a more disciplined school in Oak Ridge and that’s what I was more used to than “don’t you want to do this” attitude in New York.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were the teachers young adults?
MR. MILLER: Many were, yes. Yes, not all of them. Mrs. Swain wasn’t so young, Dr. Eisenberg wasn’t either. As soon as the war was over, we left and we moved to Knoxville and I went the last two years at Knox High and the teachers there certainly were mostly older than the ones in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So how did you perceive from Oak Ridge to Knox High? What was the difference there if any?
MR. MILLER: The main difference was that again, I was uprooted and I don’t mean to sound harsh that way but I was moved from one community, which I begin to get acquainted with to a new community. Of course I knew Knoxville. I’ve been here lots and I’d lived here for ten years before, but I was in a school in which I knew very few people. I knew some and hadn’t seen them for years and years but that’s always a difficult thing I would think for a youngster is to come in to a group where you don’t really know very, very many people. My sister was much more charming than I and she went to Tyson for the 9th grade, which was her last year in the junior high and she didn’t have any problems because she was charming. I didn’t have a lot of problems. The principal at Knox High was a very fine gentleman and I had no real cause to run into him much but he helped me with my locker one time and I’ve never forgotten that. His name was Mr. Evans.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you were going to the high school, did you date any?
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you go on your dates?
MR. MILLER: Sometimes, we’d—mostly movies and then we’d go to a drive-in to have a coke and hamburger maybe, if I had enough money.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the Snow White Drive-In?
MR. MILLER: Oh, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about the Snow White Drive-In?
MR. MILLER: Prettiest girl that waited on us was there. I don’t remember the food.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you ever inside the Snow White Drive-In?
MR. MILLER: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just curb service?
MR. MILLER: That’s all.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How was your mother as far as grocery shopping? Do you recall where she went or did her grocery shopping in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: There weren’t many places. I assume she went to the closest shopping—I mean literally the shopping areas—close to our house. We lived on Disston. That’s where I remember mostly. We lived on Pallas for a while and then moved to Disston and whatever that shopping center was out there across the street—was it Elm Grove School? Then that’s where I would assume she did most of her shopping. Although, in the very first days we got there, I think the main grocery store for the whole town was right there in Town Square across from the drugstore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Community store?
MR. MILLER: Yes. I forgot the name and then there down as one went toward where Ed’s Pizza eventually was, it wasn’t there then, was another grocery store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A&P Store was there.
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you go with your mother shopping?
MR. MILLER: Not much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do recall standing in line in the stores?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes. I remember seeing people when cigarettes would come to town, I’ve seen people line up for blocks to get one pack of Camel cigarettes or whatever cigarettes were rationed and if there was rationing, most of the cigarettes as I understand it, (I never did smoke,) but cigarettes went to the military and that’s fine.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you do in the summertime while you were in between grades?
MR. MILLER: I just had one summer in Oak Ridge and I came to Knoxville occasionally. You had to wear your badge to go through the gate, I took the buses. I’d come to movies and so forth. And I had some family in Knoxville that I’ve visited and old friends. So it’s just things teenagers do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well tell me about your experience going in and out of the gates.
MR. MILLER: Everybody had or should have had a pass with their picture on it. There were four gates as I said to get in and out of Oak Ridge. The very first trips I ever took to Knoxville on a Saturday would be out through Elza Gate on a bus. They’d get on—a guard would get on the bus and check, see if everybody had their badges and the bus would go to Clinton and stop. We had to change buses in Clinton to go to Knoxville. Eventually, we went out Solway Gate and we didn’t have to stop and change buses but that was—I didn’t do that a lot. I stayed in Oak Ridge most of the time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you arrive in Knoxville when you rode the bus?
MR. MILLER: Downtown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And you got the bus downtown to come back to Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Yes, just reversed the process.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what the fare was at that time?
MR. MILLER: I think it was fifteen cents. I know that the buses and street cars were at Knoxville earlier than that and maybe then too were six cents. You could buy tokens five for thirty cents.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you work any during the summer while you were in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: At that service station. I worked nine and a half hours a day, six days a week and made five dollars a day.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So what were your major job duties?
MR. MILLER: We didn’t do grease jobs. All we did was change—was fill up gas tanks or give them five gallons. That’s what their coupons would allow. We checked their air. Nobody else ever did that. That’s what we had—We wiped windshields. We’ve sold oil too. I never did put any oil in it myself.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you say coupons, what are you referring to?
MR. MILLER: Gas was rationed as it was with food and so they had—it wasn’t really a coupon as much as it was kind of a little coin as I recall.
MR. HUNNICUTT: A token?
MR. MILLER: Yes, token would be a better choice.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So how did your parents get the rationing tokens?
MR. MILLER: You know I don’t know. I don’t know. My dad of course worked. There was a Hamilton Bank at Town Site and I don’t know if there was an exchange of checks for tokens and cash like that. And I assumed that cash was good too but I remember the tokens more I do cash.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And your father was an accountant still at this time?
MR. MILLER: Yes, that was his first accounting job as a matter of fact because he had just come from New York City; he had just graduated with a Masters in Accounting and never done any accounting before.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how he got to work back and forth?
MR. MILLER: No. I assumed he took the bus as well because we had one car and I think my mother drove it more than he did but I don’t know. Maybe she took him. I really don’t know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he work shift work?
MR. MILLER: No. He was just day time and where their offices were, I don’t even know. Never did know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he ever say anything about his job when he went to work?
MR. MILLER: No and if he ever knew, if he ever knew what was going on in Oak Ridge regarding the atomic bomb, he has not told me yet and he’s been dead for some years. But I don’t think many people did know. I assumed there were few more who knew than we thought but I never heard anybody who had a clue. I didn’t know what was happening in Oak Ridge until the first bomb was dropped.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where were you when you heard the news about the bomb?
MR. MILLER: I guess at home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you know what your reaction was?
MR. MILLER: Oh, it was fantastic. I mean, it was terrible to think of so many people dying but people were dying. There was a war going on. They were getting shot and bombed at and so anything that had a start of toward ending this terrible war, which was then four years in length was a wonderful thing and one week later, of course the second bomb was dropped and the war was over and that was great, great day. My mother and friends of hers had a party at our house. It was just a gathering of good friendships and one of my father’s friends was a man named Vick Leach and his wife was named Irene and their daughter Priscilla was a classmate of mine I knew. So Priscilla was in the house with them. We wanted to take my father’s car and go visit our friends. We didn’t want to stay for the adult party and my father said, “Albert doesn’t have a license.” Well she didn’t either but her father gave her his car and so we went out to visit friends there. We just hopped from house to house, a few houses of friends to—on VJ day. It was a wonderful time and I don’t think I’ll forget that soon. It was something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you get your driver’s license at Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: No. I wasn’t old enough to drive.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What else do you remember about the Town Site shopping area?
MR. MILLER: As I recall going from the hill of the school looking down on the square that was the Town Site, there was a drugstore and a Hamilton Bank and a men’s store and then some steps that went down to where the post office was and across there I don’t recall on that backside except over in the corner was a Rec Hall and that’s where a lot of recreation went on where Pollack’s music was piped from time to time and the High School or the bureau of Recreation gave the High School that Rec Hall for a Saturday Night Dance every Saturday. And the High School then pulled together some of the top musicians in the local high school band and had a dance band formed.
It had no piano player. There was one piano player, very good, but he went with one of the big bands in town and so it fell upon me to be their piano player for this dance band. We made $3, each one of us, every Saturday night. I couldn’t spend $3. The only problem is I didn’t realize I was so dumb about musicians. I thought that everybody in an orchestra played the same note. I didn’t know there were melody and harmony and rhythm and all that and the piano in a dance band is a rhythm instrument like the drum and it basically the music was boom, boom, boom, boom—and just keeping time and I don’t keep time very well. And when the trombonist who was the—his name was Doc Bauer, when he was not blowing trombone, he was hollering, “Miller one, two, three,” because I was really bad. There were times when the band was finished with a song and I wasn’t or sometimes I was finished and they weren’t. But you had to have a piano player so I fit that. But it was fun and as I said I got three dollars every Saturday night.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well tell me about the dances on the tennis courts.
MR. MILLER: Those were opened to practically anybody, I guess because I know we went there but adults did too and the main tennis court when I went to was just off to the—again from that side to the right of the Town Site and Pollack’s music, he had the town wired for sound. Is that his name I think?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Bill Pollack.
MR. MILLER: Bill Pollack, yes and he had—wherever you want to dance, he had music piped in from somewhere.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they charge you for the dancing?
MR. MILLER: I don’t remember any charge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now the Rec Hall you’re referring to in the Town Site area, was that above the library?
MR. MILLER: Probably so. No, the library was—I never went to the library. There were steps going down from Town Site to a bus stop underneath there and the Rec Hall, which is over to the left from high school view was on that level as same as the grocery store and drugstore and the Hamilton Bank.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the Central Cafeteria that was down when you referring going down the steps to catch the bus on down Central Avenue on the right, there was a cafeteria?
MR. MILLER: I never went to it, if I do. I don’t really recall it. I’d eat at home or at school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So that’s where you caught the best bus to leave from school as well as get off the bus to come to school?
MR. MILLER: Yes, right. So we got to climb up that hill.
MR. HUNNICUTT: At that time were those steps wooden or were they concrete?
MR. MILLER: I would think wooden but I’m not sure. I haven’t been on one of those in a long time although I go to Oak Ridge frequently.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend the football games—?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes. We weren’t too good but there was a couple of brothers named Zirkle that were very good players and one of them was a better football player than the other but they were both track stars. They were very, very good.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where was the other home you lived in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: First one was Pallas off of Pennsylvania. The second one—that was a C house, very nice and laid out. I think the better looking of all of them. But the second house was on Disston off of Delaware which was a D-house. It actually had two baths. It was a little bigger house and it was—and we were there I guess more than, a little more than half the time in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why you moved from the C to the D house?
MR. MILLER: I guess because it was available and a little more room and there were—they didn’t asked me. I just followed the trail.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have to share a bedroom?
MR. MILLER: No. Both the houses had three bedrooms.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So how many people were in there?
MR. MILLER: Four. My mother and father in one room, my sister had one, I had one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about kids coming to the house when you were that age? Did you have pals you chummed around with?
MR. MILLER: Not many. I had a very good friend who was a singer in our band or in our dance band. His name is Gene Kirk. He became a Methodist Minister, lives in Knoxville now and he was a great singer and a good friend. He lived close by to me. His father was in the shoe repair business and wonderful, wonderful family. I thought the world of them. So I ran mostly with him and then—Gene Kirk and then another guy was in our trio. His name was Henson, Elvin Henson and I haven’t seen Elvin in many years; nor Gene either for a while.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you walk or ride the bus or did you have a bicycle or how did you get around mostly?
MR. MILLER: Well, mostly we either walked or took the bus. None of us—at that time I was there, were sixteen. We couldn’t have—we couldn’t drive. And cars, you know, it was tough to find gas for cars. So like I say, per car was five gallons a week. One dollar and twenty-seven cents is what we charged for five gallons of gas at Brooks Brothers Esso Station. It’s a little higher now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Quite a bit.
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I don’t think we’ll ever see that price again.
MR. MILLER: Like about fifteen times or sixteen times—but I just took the bus.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you feel safe living in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Never thought about anything else. Yes. You mean because of what it could—see, we didn’t know what it was. We didn’t know what was going on and I guess that was what they aimed that nobody knew what was going on. Although, I guess the Germans and the Japanese probably knew. I don’t know. I really don’t. I never worried about safety.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the military police? Do you see a lot of those people?
MR. MILLER: Not a lot.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about military people altogether?
MR. MILLER: You did see some, yes. So we knew that it was—and the fact that it was closed and everybody had to have a badge. We weren’t idiots, we knew that something was going on but at the 9th and 10th grade in high school, I didn’t worry a whole lot about it. I was very keenly aware of the war and the tragedies and the disabilities and the deaths were just piling up like crazy but it was some distance from my habitation.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall seeing billboards around town about keeping your mouth shut?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Secrecy?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes, absolutely.
MR. HUNNICUTT: War bond drives?
MR. MILLER: War bond drives. $18.75 would buy a twenty-five dollar war bond. By the time it matured in a number of years it wasn’t biggest thing but it was a way of financing, the war. When we lived in New York, there would be war bond rallies with big time stars at Madison Square Garden to sell war bonds. You could buy stamps too and put them in a book. The saving stamps cost a dime or something like that. I forgot—.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were the stamps available in school?
MR. MILLER: Oh, yes. You can—it was no shortage of where—I didn’t buy many because I didn’t have much money but—.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you spend your money on when you had money?
MR. MILLER: I like to go to that drugstore. The guy was really good with making chocolate nut fudge sundaes. I like that. I didn’t spend my life doing that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Which drugstore?
MR. MILLER: That was down on the Town Site. When I first moved there, there weren’t any others. That was it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Would that be the Service Drugstore where Big Ed’s Pizza is today?
MR. MILLER: Except it was way to the west of Ed’s. Big Ed’s—this is more in front of the high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, that’s William’s Drugstore.
MR. MILLER: Yes, okay.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you like their sodas?
MR. MILLER: Yes. Well I like their hot fudged sundaes well too. I had a friend there that worked there. He really loaded it up. He was a nice guy. I can’t remember his name. I wouldn’t want to tell on him anyway.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So after you graduated from high school in Knoxville, how did you pursue your career?
MR. MILLER: I went to the University of Tennessee. I had wanted to be an actor and I later was in a play in Ohio years and years later. This is drifting a minute and I had a pretty big part in a play and they taped the dress rehearsal so that the cast could watch it and when I saw how terrible I was, I thought—and now I know why I never made it as an actor but I was in some plays at the high school in Oak Ridge too and in Knox High too later on and at the University of Tennessee.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall boardwalks in Oak Ridge; the wooden boardwalks?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes. And mud. Surely you’ve heard some people talk of the mud in Oak Ridge because that’s what it was. I remember the mud more than the boardwalks. I rarely walked where there were boardwalks because I go up the hill to the school and home.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of music did you like?
MR. MILLER: I liked the popular music of the big band that was going on in those days; Tommy Dorsey, Glen Miller and that kind of thing. That’s been my favorite kind.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You were referring to a badge you had to wear. Do you remember where you went to get the badge?
MR. MILLER: It was somewhere on the other side of—as I look again, the Town Site. On the other side of the Town Site, you’d have to leave the Town Site on the right from looking down on it. In a side office, there was strip of offices there and I never went again just to get my badge because I kept the badge and I never lost it. I wish I had it. I don’t anymore.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was probably Town Hall.
MR. MILLER: Probably. Yes, yes, that’s exactly right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the newspaper in town at that time?
MR. MILLER: What was that—the Oak Ridger or was it the name of it?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes. There was a newspaper, the Oak Ridger, still is.
MR. MILLER: I didn’t read the paper that much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the Oak Ridge Journal?
MR. MILLER: I’m not sure that I do. My memory is not as good as I thought it was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you went to finish high school in Knoxville, did your parents move out Oak Ridge to Knoxville?
MR. MILLER: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall why they did that?
MR. MILLER: Oh yes. My dad wanted to become a CPA and open an office. And in doing that, we moved to Knoxville and he started studying to take the CPA test and he eventually became President of the Tennessee Society of Certified Public Accountants and I became one, a CPA too but I didn’t climb as high in the local society as he did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about where you met your wife.
MR. MILLER: I was living in—I was working for Price Waterhouse, which was at that time the world’s largest CPA firm and I was working in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the Price Waterhouse Office. My dad had merged earlier than that with a firm of CPAs in Nashville. He had his own practice here and I worked for him then he merged with a CPA firm in Nashville, which then became a Price Waterhouse Office. And Price Waterhouse would not allow a father and son to be in the same office. So I moved and that chose Tulsa, Oklahoma, and met my wife in a play we were both in, in Tulsa.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about children? Do you have children?
MR. MILLER: Yes. This happens to be the second wife I’m talking about. First wife is from Dandridge, a marvelous girl who is the mother of all four of my children. She’s also a CPA. When she was in school at UT, she had—there were only two girls in the entire School of Accounting and she was one of them and she only made one C. I made a lot of C’s myself. All her grades were A’s and B’s.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So when you lived in Oak Ridge, how would you rate that time? How would you describe that time that you lived in Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Certainly, I hold it in high regard. I met some wonderful people. It was an experience a very few people in the world have had to live in a community that was so much a part of what the war effort was in those days. I mean, it was the saddest thing. Everyday headlines in whatever paper you’re in—the New York papers or the Knoxville Sentinel or the Knoxville Journal, it was all war, war, war. I finally remember when Errol Flynn was acquitted of adultery or, (it was the first headline in the war that I’d ever seen that wasn’t a war headline) of rape he was accused of and I don’t mean to clutter up Errol Flynn’s name. He did a good job himself. Anyway, the newspapers were just everyday full of war and it was nice to have it over and for it to stop. It was a terrible time and so many people died on both sides.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you think the Oak Ridge school system—what little time you attended, helped you further your education?
MR. MILLER: Oh, absolutely. It’s remarkable. What they did—I was there early, not the earliest but soon there-after and in the high school, there were some wonderful teachers there. I was very impressed with it and I have pleasant memories of Oak Ridge High in my year and a half which was the last half of the 9th and all of the 10th. I was in six schools from the first grade through the twelfth which is too many. I was always jealous of kids who grew up with people one through twelve.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever have to visit the Oak Ridge Hospital during your time?
MR. MILLER: Yes. I used to go—I had hay fever and asthma in fall season; ragweed mainly and I took hay fever shots at that hospital and I was there two or three times a week after school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about dental offices? Did you have to use a dentist?
MR. MILLER: Never. We had a dentist friend in Knoxville that my mother had used for years and we used for many years afterwards and so we came to Knoxville for dental.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you think of anything else that we hadn’t talked about that you’d like to talk about Oak Ridge?
MR. MILLER: Well, I just want to say I have such pleasant memories. It’s a joy for me to talk about it. I don’t know how joyous it’ll be for anybody else to hear it or see it but to me, it’s a very important part of my life. When you think about the population of the world, there aren’t many of us who were there at that time and lived there and saw it. It was remarkable. It was very remarkable and the fact that it even existed and was built so fast. I understand that the rate of house building was one every nine hours and the fact that they still stand and look as good as they did then to me is absolutely remarkable to some kind of engineering. Who it was, I don’t know but it was something.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well it’s been my pleasure to interview you and I think this information will be very valuable in the future for Oak Ridge Oral History.
MR. MILLER: I’m honored that you’ve asked me and I’m flattered and I appreciate doing it. I love Oak Ridge and I thank you.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, we thank you for your time.
MR. MILLER: You’re very kind.
[END OF INTERVIEW]